


knowing what we don't know

by quantumducky



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extra Treat, F/F, Kissing, Sasha James Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumducky/pseuds/quantumducky
Summary: In which Sasha is simply too much of a monsterfucker to die. RIP to every other victim of the Not Them, but she's different.
Relationships: Not Sasha James/Sasha James
Comments: 23
Kudos: 141
Collections: The Magnus Archives Rare Pairs 2020





	knowing what we don't know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olio/gifts).



> olio, your sasha/notsasha prompt took over my brain and i sat down and wrote this while barely having started my actual assignment... i hope you like it!

“Jon,” Sasha said, soft and urgent, into the tape recorder in her hand, as she stepped back from the strange table and stared down an odd shadow. “Jon, I- I think there’s someone  _ here.” _

No, forget whispering to the recorder, if she was about to get killed she wasn’t going to do it  _ quietly. _ “Hello?” she called to- whoever, or, no,  _ whatever _ that was, it definitely wasn’t a  _ person. _ “I  _ see _ you! Show yourself!”

The recorder whined with static as the  _ thing _ approached, more  _ unfolding _ itself than anything, and Sasha couldn’t help screaming when it was suddenly right in front of her. Then she went quiet, hardly even breathing, as it began to  _ change. _ It hadn’t looked like anything other than a  _ nightmare _ at first, but now, it looked like a person- a woman. It looked like Sasha James.

“Hello,” said Sasha James, with a strange echoing quality gradually receding from her voice. “I see you.” She smiled, all teeth. “I see you.”

She was- but no, she  _ didn’t _ look like Sasha. Because  _ Sasha _ looked like Sasha, by definition, and this woman looked nothing like her. She was shorter, her hair was a different style and color, she didn’t wear glasses, she was a  _ completely different person. _ She was…

“Interesting,” Sasha breathed, curiosity winning out all at once over fear. “Very interesting.”

The other Sasha seemed rather thrown. She, or it, or  _ whatever, _ stopped smiling. “What?”

“What are you? How are you doing that?” She leaned forward, just slightly, and tried to look into the other Sasha’s eyes. “You’re  _ me, _ but- you can’t be.  _ I’m _ me.”

“Oh, no, dear, you must be confused. I’m definitely Sasha. I always have been.  _ You _ must be somebody else… or maybe you aren’t anyone at all?” She tried that smile again. This time, Sasha didn’t see it, too busy pacing around to look at her from all angles. The words still had their effect, though.

Just… maybe not the effect the creature was  _ hoping _ for. Sasha shivered and spun around to face her again, lighting up.  _ “That. _ I- I  _ know _ you’re lying, you know.  _ I’m _ Sasha. You’re… I don’t know what you are.”

“You’ll find out,” the thing that couldn’t be Sasha shot back. Its form wavered, just for a moment, between the woman and the not-really-anything, stretching out horribly and bending in all the wrong ways. Unfortunately, Sasha wasn’t too scared of the threat. Quite the opposite, actually.

_ “Oh,” _ she said under her breath, and moved forward before she could think better of it, putting her hands on not-Sasha’s upper arms and leaning in close. “Are you going to show me?”

A small part of her mind reasoned it made sense, if this thing regularly went around pretending to be people, that it knew its way around romance. The rest of Sasha was busy getting kissed  _ out _ of her mind. It was  _ good, _ was the point she was going for, harsh in a way she rather liked, sharp and mind-muddling in a way no human partner could ever manage. She came back to her senses one misstep away from knocking over a shelf of cursed objects and gasped a breath. Remembered she did have a reason for this  _ other _ than “terrifying monster woman = hot.”

“What happened to Graham Folger?”

“He’s dead, stop asking  _ questions,” _ it snarled, and  _ “I am Sasha James,” _ and kissed her again to silence her retort. Not like she was complaining. It pushed them apart again much too soon in her opinion, openly glaring at her enthusiasm. “Goddammit, I’m going to  _ kill _ you, do you not understand that?”

Sasha, running on adrenaline and manic energy, grinned. “Are you really, though? Shouldn’t you have done it by now, what are you waiting on?”

The not-Sasha stared at her for a second, swore and leaned in again, and she thought she didn’t so much mind the danger of irritating a monster with a known body count if it kept getting her kissed like this. The moment was broken when the fire suppression system suddenly went off.

Sasha stumbled back and nearly tripped over the web-patterned table that started all this. “Oh, shit, the  _ worms!” _

“The… worms?” Was it her imagination, or did the thing look disappointed by the interruption?

She looked around for a quick exit, but there were only so many ways out of a room that required this much security. “Look, long story short, okay- there’s an evil worm lady trying to kill everyone with worms, my boss went to pull the fire alarm to kill them, and if  _ you _ still want to kill  _ me _ you’d better be quick about it, ‘cause you’ve got about a minute before the CO2 gas filling up this  _ enclosed space _ gets there first.” Come on, Sasha, don’t hyperventilate, that will just make you die faster.  _ Shit. _

The not-Sasha just watched as she ran for the closest door, trying not to inhale too much and hoping there was a window nearby enough to save her, because she  _ definitely _ wasn’t getting out of the building. She even almost made it. She tripped over something sticking out from behind a shelf and crashed to the floor, then turned around to look and regretted it instantly. Not everyone, it seemed, had managed to evacuate the building when she’d first pulled the fire alarm. Sasha couldn’t be sure what had killed the Artefact Storage employee sprawled on the floor behind her, but it probably had something to do with the antique coin clutched in her death-grip.

The time she wasted being horrified was time she didn’t have. When she went to push herself up again, her limbs would barely support her. She didn’t even make it to fully standing before her vision went dark. The last thing Sasha saw before passing out and collapsing was the  _ other _ Sasha coming toward her- she wasn’t even conscious to feel herself hit the floor.

* * *

To Sasha’s  _ immense _ surprise and confusion, she woke up. She was immediately surrounded by lots of people with lots of questions, and she answered the best she could, although she couldn’t exactly  _ say _ she’d been down in Artefact Storage making out with a changeling monster that had wanted to kill and replace her. Or maybe she could, and they’d chalk it up to all that gas she’d been breathing.

“I was… talking with someone,” she settled on, and one of the people looking her over nodded.

“Right, your, ah, friend. She was pretty worried about you.”

Sasha looked past them and saw…

Sasha James, no, that was  _ her… _

Grace Harrison from Artefact Storage,  _ definitely _ no, Sasha had seen her  _ dead… _

“You,” she finally settled on, because she’d been staring without saying anything for too long at this point and her ‘friend’ had noticed and walked over, amused little smile playing on her face. “You… got me out?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I mean, I wasn’t going to leave you there. We’re… friends.”

“If that’s what you want to call it,” she said under her breath. Not-Grace laughed and smirked. Everyone else around them made certain assumptions about this exchange, and they weren’t even totally  _ wrong. _

“Everyone else made it out, too,” she added, seeing Sasha’s worried glances around for her friends. “Some injuries, but no deaths reported. We were very lucky.”

“Lucky,” Sasha echoed.

“Lucky that we were together, too. If I hadn’t been there to help…”

“Right.”

“I’m thinking about asking to transfer to the archives with you, actually.”

Sasha snapped back to alertness. “What?”

“Well, I want out of Artefact Storage, of course, and-” not-Grace squeezed her hand- “after all this, I’d rather be close to you. Imagine if something like this were to happen  _ again.” _

She nodded slowly. Everything was happening a bit  _ much _ for her right now, and nobody was acting like it was anything other than perfectly normal. She had barely ever exchanged five words with Grace Harrison, the real one, and yet no one around them who knew her was surprised by all this?

“Sasha, are you okay? You look a little…”

“Just tired.” She shook her head. “Long day, you know?”

“Of course.” Not-Grace bent down and gave her a light kiss on the forehead. “Rest up,” she said, and whispered so only Sasha could hear, “No one else will ever know the difference. Just us.”

She wasn’t sure she had the energy to process the implications of that right now, but she did have enough to turn her head quickly and lean up, catching the other woman in a proper kiss, as if in defiance of the part of her that wanted to regret all this. Her lips were almost exactly human, but Sasha could still taste the sharpness underneath. It settled her somehow, that confirmation that her memories were true, no matter how the rest of the world reshaped itself around the new Grace.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, smiling. Grace smiled back and stood to leave, no doubt having other things to attend to. If Sasha looked hard enough as she watched her straighten up, she could see much more of her body unfold than there should have been.


End file.
